Antioxidants - are they a myth? How do they really work?

[bluedragon]

I often encounter statements praising the benefits of antioxidants. Certain fruits such as blueberries are supposedly healthy especially because they are high in antioxidants. Same with green tea.

I recently asked myself - wait a minute, but what are antioxidants, really? And what is known of them. I stumbled upon this article:
The antioxidant myth: a medical fairy tale - health - 05 August 2006 - New Scientist

I don't know if the website is really a scientific one but the analysis seems comprehensive (if the facts are true).

What do you think? Are antioxidants the primary reason why blueberries and other fruits are healthy for us, or are there other nutrients which are really responsible for the health benefits.

Is oxidation always bad for us? I think oxidation of ill cells is one of the body's defense mechanisms. This is how cancer cells are killed by oxigen, and the reason why breathing and Qigong are effective treatments against it.
Can we have too much of antioxidants and actually achieve a negative effect?

[Cosette]

Well, I found this CRAZY statement in the very first paragraph:

"According to some estimates around half the adults in the US take antioxidant pills daily "

Excuse me? A source please? Because I doubt 1/2 of americans take any sort of vitamins/supplements, period - let alone antioxidant capsules.

This sort of un-sourced wild exaggeration so early in the article, makes me skeptical of anything that follows.

[Cosette]

Okay, continued on. That article is not saying that anti-oxidants don't exist or don't do what we think they do. It says that trying to chemically isolate these compounds in a lab, package them up in a pill, and then eat the pill to prevent cancer, has not been proven successful.

Well, duh.

You cannot eat like ****, live like ****, and just toss back supplements thinking they'll save you.

WHOLE FOODS contain these compounds, but also contain all sorts of other chemicals that interact with these compounds in important ways that we are not even close to understanding.

People who eat diets full of antioxidant-rich foods, are at vastly decreased risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

The article DOES say that.

Make sense?

[chrisrushton]

Originally Posted by bluedragon

I don't know if the website is really a scientific one but the analysis seems comprehensive (if the facts are true).

What do you think? Are antioxidants the primary reason why blueberries and other fruits are healthy for us, or are there other nutrients which are really responsible for the health benefits.

New scientist is pretty reliable. There's usually an issue floating around my department's staff common room (i'm a phd student in astrophysics so not just high school). I don't read it myself, I prefer nature for a wide ranging scientific journal. Nature is quite expensive to get the officially published magazine though. I did read it every week for a while when I was an undergrad though.

I think it's a case of delivery. A "synergistic" effect if you will excuse the corporate ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ language. Anti-oxidants can be effective but only if used correctly and alongside other things. They certainly aren't a silver bullet that is going to cure everything. Whole foods, plenty of fibre in your diet and regular exercise. Anti-oxidants are the icing on the cake.

I'm off to eat a handful of blueberries now.

[ginkgo]

Originally Posted by Cosette

Okay, continued on. That article is not saying that anti-oxidants don't exist or don't do what we think they do. It says that trying to chemically isolate these compounds in a lab, package them up in a pill, and then eat the pill to prevent cancer, has not been proven successful.

Well, duh.

You cannot eat like ****, live like ****, and just toss back supplements thinking they'll save you.

WHOLE FOODS contain these compounds, but also contain all sorts of other chemicals that interact with these compounds in important ways that we are not even close to understanding.

People who eat diets full of antioxidant-rich foods, are at vastly decreased risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.

The article DOES say that.

Make sense?

How come the smart people on this forum are the new ones? It would have been nice for someone as smart as you to be posting on here for awhile. Here is my version of the above. Which is better to have-- a computer without a hard drive or a computer without a CPU? The answer is both are useless. Which is better to drive-- a car without a motor or a car without a body. Both are no good.

Synergism is where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So the foods that are high in anti-oxidants are good for you and are made by nature or God. But those anti-oxidant pills that are made by man are useless. They are not foods. You were made to eat whole foods, not chemical isolates. The antioxidants are phytochemcals. Plant foods contain thousands of them.

I call this the search for the license to kill. With the above you can kill anyone and not be prosecuted. So man is trying to invent a pill so you can eat very unhealthy foods and not exercise, but not suffer the consequences. But that is not going to happen.

[funchy]

New Scientist is IMO a reliable source of information.

The article does explain how the antioxidants are believed to work: "Free radicals are compounds with unpaired electrons that stabilise themselves by oxidising other molecules - including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and DNA" and antioxidants are natural compounds believed to neutralized their damage.

The "myth" the article refers to is: "Just because a food with a certain compound in it is beneficial to health, it does not mean a pill with the same compound in is."

Originally Posted by Cosette

That article is not saying that anti-oxidants don't exist or don't do what we think they do. It says that trying to chemically isolate these compounds in a lab, package them up in a pill, and then eat the pill to prevent cancer, has not been proven successful.

You cannot eat like ****, live like ****, and just toss back supplements thinking they'll save you.

Agreed.

It's also yet another good reason explaining why we need fruits/veggies in our diet.

[Orecle]

Originally Posted by ginkgo

Synergism is where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So the foods that are high in anti-oxidants are good for you and are made by nature or God. But those anti-oxidant pills that are made by man are useless. They are not foods. You were made to eat whole foods, not chemical isolates. The antioxidants are phytochemcals. Plant foods contain thousands of them.

I call this the search for the license to kill. With the above you can kill anyone and not be prosecuted. So man is trying to invent a pill so you can eat very unhealthy foods and not exercise, but not suffer the consequences. But that is not going to happen.

Originally Posted by funchy

New Scientist is IMO a reliable source of information.

The article does explain how the antioxidants are believed to work: "Free radicals are compounds with unpaired electrons that stabilise themselves by oxidising other molecules - including proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and DNA" and antioxidants are natural compounds believed to neutralized their damage.

The "myth" the article refers to is: "Just because a food with a certain compound in it is beneficial to health, it does not mean a pill with the same compound in is."

It's also yet another good reason explaining why we need fruits/veggies in our diet.

can you please provide me irrefutable proof that the most popular anti-oxidant VITAMIN C, is less effective or useless as Gingko puts it. in pill form vs natural form.

Gingko are you saying the body recognises the pill form vit C differently than the natural form? So if i had scurvy, i couldnt take a vit C pill and get rid of it, would i have to take an orange or natural source

pls provide a link to a study that says chemical vit C and natural vit c are wildly different in effectiveness. pls provide evidence as to why pill antixidants are useless.

Tell me when you are ill, do you go for natural products or synthetic drugs the doctor prescribes?

the majority of infertile people, do they go for natural remedies or the synthetic stuff the doctors push

so if doctors save millions of lives daily with unnatural synthetic drugs, if doctors have saved billions of lives with synthetic drugs, do you not beleive they can do the same with VIT pills.

If you get swine flu would you not take the synthetic drugs or would you rely on the natural?

how many diseases have been wiped out with synthetic drugs?

Has not human beings life span been increased with the increase of synthetic drugs?

[bluedragon]

But the article also stated that oxidation is useful for the body and that too many antioxidants can have an adverse effect. That would mean that if I eat 3-400 grams of blueberries every day I could have problems. The article tackled several issues regarding the way antioxidants work. It talked about studies that have proven that an increased quantity of antioxidants does not have the proposed effects. Of course fruits are healthy, but fruits have much more than just antioxidants. If the article is correct in principle, it would mean that the fruit highest in antioxidants may be inferior to another which is lower in antioxidants, while some fruits are praised primarily for their antioxidant properties. Anyway, this was my question, maybe it's not important to you.

Or for example, why should we drink green tea if antioxidants are not a priority at all? Are the other benefits of tea worth it?

Originally Posted by Cosette

This sort of un-sourced wild exaggeration so early in the article, makes me skeptical of anything that follows.

I think you are confusing skepticism with cynicism. A skeptic doesn't believe something without reliable proof, but doesn't dismiss it either without reliable proof to the contrary. I'm not saying that the authors of the article are right or wrong, I admit I don't know. I'm just saying that dismissing a whole article because of one phrase that "seems" incredible, when you don't really know that the truth is, is not a skeptical attitude at all, and may (sometimes) lead you to dismiss a good source of information. I'm sure many people dismiss Steve's blog because they stumble upon an article about religion or subjective reality or something that they don't agree with.

[ginkgo]

I read the post above challenging what I said but it would take too long to explain it. I feel that the drugs make people sicker not healthier. Tea contains 4,000 chemical compounds including polyphenols, flavonoids, catechins, tannins, quercitin, EGCG and an amino acid not found anywhere else.

To take one of the 4,000 out of it and say that it is just as good as tea is stupid. Plant foods contain thousands of phytochemicals and over 900 have already been identified. Caffeine raises blood pressure. So they figured that since tea has caffeine, it must raise blood pressure.

But actual studies on tea show that it actually lowers blood pressure. The article sounds correct to me. It says that foods work, but pills do not work. The same has happened with vitamins.

[bluedragon]

I wasn't challenging what you said, I just pointed out that my question was NOT about tea, fruits and other FOODS, but about antioxidants themselves. Many products and many fruits are praised primarily for their antioxidants levels. A fruit that is among the highest in antioxidants is considered (in many articles) as being one of the healthiest fruits in the world, without making any reference to the other 3999 good substances found in the fruit. As if antioxidants account for 80% of the reasons a fruit is good for us. I was asking if we shouldn't challenge that conception that is being promoted by mass-media.

[jubatus]

Originally Posted by ginkgo

So man is trying to invent a pill so you can eat very unhealthy foods and not exercise, but not suffer the consequences. But that is not going to happen.

Amen
Just like, printing money on a printing press is not going to fix the economy.
You cant cheat.

[Charly]

Well, some vitamins can be taken as pills while others are harder to assimilate in that form. Vitamins are either hydrosoluble or liposoluble (need water or fat to dissolve and enter the system).

There might be a similar problem with antioxydants.

Then there is indeed the question of quantity. I got an email from a weight loss "guru"'s newsletter about some drink that provided 10 times the vitamin C daily recommended intake. He was actually recommending this product. Needless to say I unsubscribed.

Excess vitamin C causes diarrhea, and is then eliminated from the body. So taking 10X what you need is not good news.

The real problem I have with antioxydants is the claims made that they are effective for weight loss, which supports the world-wide Acai berry craze, and a lot of scam sites that joined the gold rush. I spent hours looking into antioxydant benefits and never found anything to support the weight loss claim. But just because I haven't found it doesn't mean it doesn't exist...

That being said, if it is at all like vitamin C, then know that tomatoes have plenty. Trying to go any further, or more exotic, is probably at best useless, and at worst harmful (and expensive).